Toshiba showcases laptop battery that charges 90% in 10 minutes

When you think of a laptop, the last thing you would expect to excite you would be a laptop battery, unless of course you run out of juice and are nowhere near an outlet. At the recent CEATEC exhibition over in Chiba, Japan, Toshiba is showcasing a type of laptop battery that is currently being used in industrial applications, but could make long laptop recharges a thing of the past.

{ad}They are called Super Charge Ion Batteries or SCiBs for short, and have been around for a year in industrial use. But now, a laptop prototype battery, presented by Toshiba, is being showcased that features recharge rates of 90% in only ten minutes. Turns out fast recharges aren’t the only benefit, however. It seems SCiBs are also made for the long haul. Compared to typical lithium-ion batteries that will last for around 500 cycles before needing a replacements, SCiBs last 10 times longer by lasting up to 5,000 to 6,000 recharge cycles.

Unfortunately Toshiba isn’t letting on right about a pricetag or a release date for consumers. We can guess though that if you do a lot of work a lot with laptops, being able to recharge in the time it takes to snag a lunch at a fast food joint, is going to be a huge benefit when SCiBs hit the market.

Speak Your Mind

matt

Hopefully it wont be too long until we can charge our car 90% in 10 minutes :)

David

Hmmm…the fact that the battery will charge to 90% in 10 minutes without knowing how long the battery will power the average laptop is meaningless. If this batter only runs a laptop for 20 minutes then it isn’t going to make any real difference. Now, if it will give you at least as much run time as current lithium ion batteries do (say 2-3 hours), then we may have something. Personally, I’m a bit skeptible that that will be the case.

JC

It’s not meaningless because manufacturers know the public expects a certain minimum runtime, that while it may be shorter than existing battery packs, laptops can be designed to accomodate a larger pack if/when the customer wants faster charging and more recharge cycles at the expense of size, cost, and cost of the more powerful AC-DC adapter necessary to recharge at a higher rate.

The problem with charging a car to 90% in 10 minutes is more complicated. The issue is that a typical household wall outlet, wiring, and breaker cannot supply that much current. You’d have to wire a separate circuit from your main breaker box and by “you” I mean an electrician, and of course the car recharger would have to be designed more expensively to allow for this higher rate, as well as battery costs rising when that cost is already one of the main detractions of electric cars besides limited range between recharges. It would be a great step forward though if you could stop at a *gas* station and be on your way in a matter of 10 minutes or less. *Gas* station could mean anywhere there’s a suitable electric line and a small outlet with a credit card reader for billing purposes.